Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky (878 page)

With the assurance of my sincere respect, I remain Yours most faithfully,

FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY.

Recollections of Dostoevsky by his Friends

FROM THE REMINISCENCES OF D. V. GRIGOROVITCH

1837 — 1846

IT is a mystery to me to this day how I, innately the most extraordinarily nervous and timid of boys, ever got through my first year in the College of Engineering, where one’s comrade were far more ruthless and cruel even than one’s teachers.

Amongst the young men who were admitted to the College after I had been there about a year, was a youth of some seventeen summers, of middle height, full figure, blond hair, and sickly, pale countenance. This youth was Fyodor Michailovitch Dostoevsky. He had come from Moscow to Petersburg with his elder brother Michael. The latter did not enter the College, but joined the Corps of Sappers, and was later sent to Reval on his promotion to commissioned rank. Many years later Michael Dostoevsky took his discharge, and returned to Petersburg. There he started a cigarette manufactory, but at the same time busied himself in literature, translated Goethe, wrote a comedy, and, after Fyodor’s return from banishment, became editor of the
Epoch.

I made friends with Fyodor Dostoevsky the very first day that he entered the College. It’s half-a-century ago now, but I can well remember how much more I cared for him than for any of the other friends of my youth. Despite his reticent nature and general lack of frankness and youthful expansion, he appeared to reciprocate my affection. Dostoevsky always held himself aloof, even then, from others, never took part in his comrades’ amusements, and usually sat in a remote corner with a book; his favourite place was a corner in Class-Room IV. by the window. Out of school-hours, he nearly always sat with a book by that window.

I had, as a boy, a pliant character, and was easily influenced; thus my relations with Dostoevsky were those of not merely attachment, but absolute subjection. His influence was extraordinarily beneficial to me. Dostoevsky was much more advanced in all knowledge than I was, and the extent of his reading amazed me. The many things he told me about the works of writers, whose very names to me were unknown, came as a revelation. Hitherto I had, like the rest of my colleagues, read nothing but textbooks and abstracts of lectures; not only because other books were forbidden in the College, but from lack of interest in literature.

The first Russian books with which I made acquaintance I got from Dostoevsky; they were a translation of Hoffmann’s “Kater Murr” and “The Confessions of an English Opium-Eater,” by Maturin [SIC]; the latter was especially prized by Dostoevsky. His literary influence was not confined to me alone; three of my colleagues came equally under his spell — Beketov, Vitkovsky, and Berechetzky; in this way a little circle was formed, which gathered round Dostoevsky in every leisure hour.

This reading, and the interchange of ideas which it brought about, took from me all inclination for my studies. Nor did Dostoevsky rank among the best pupils. Before the examinations he always made the most tremendous efforts, so as to get into a higher class. But he did not invariably succeed; in one examination he failed entirely, and was unpromoted. This failure worried him so much that he fell ill, and had to go to hospital for a while.

In 1844 or’45 I met him quite by chance in the street; he had then completed his studies, and had exchanged military uniform for civilian dress. I clasped him in my arms with cries of joy. Even Dostoevsky seemed glad, but behaved with some reticence. He never was, indeed, given to public displays of emotion. My delight at this unexpected meeting was so great and genuine that it never even occurred to me to feel hurt by his cool behaviour.

I told him about all my acquaintances in literary circles, about my own literary attempts, and at once invited him to come to my abode and hear my latest production. He willingly agreed.

When I had read him my story he seemed pleased with it, but gave me no very extravagant praise; with one passage he found fault. This was how it ran:

“When the organ stopped, an official threw a copper coin out of his window, which fell at the organ-grinder’s feet.”

“No, that’s not right,” said Dostoevsky, “it is much too dull: ‘The copper coin fell at the organ-grinder’s feet.’ You should say, ‘The copper coin fell
clinking
and
hopping
at the man’s feet’”... That remark struck me as a revelation.

As time went on, I saw more and more of Dostoevsky. At last we decided to set up house together. My mother sent me fifty roubles a month, Dostoevsky got nearly as much from his relatives in Moscow.

As things were then, a hundred roubles was quite enough for two young fellows; but we did not understand housekeeping, and the money usually lasted us only for the first fortnight; for the rest of the month we fared on rolls and coffee. The house we lived in was at the corner of Vladimir and Grafen Streets; it consisted of a kitchen and two rooms, whose three windows looked out on Grafen Street. We had no servants; we made our own tea, and bought all food ourselves.

When we set up house, Dostoevsky was working at the translation of Balzac’s “Eugénie Grandet.” Balzac was our favourite writer; we both considered him by far the most important of the French authors. Dostoevsky succeeded, I know not how, in publishing his translation in the
Book-Lovers’ Library,
I can still recollect how vexed Dostoevsky was when that number of the magazine reached him — the editor had shortened the novel by a third. But that was what Senkovsky, then the editor of the
Library,
always did with his collaborators’ works, and the authors were so glad to see themselves in print that they never protested.

My enthusiasm for Dostoevsky was the reason why Bielinsky, to whom Nekrassov introduced me, made quite a different impression upon me from what I had expected. Properly tutored by Nekrassov, I regarded the impending visit to Bielinsky as a great joy; long beforehand I rehearsed the words in which I should describe to him my admiration for Balzac. But scarcely had I mentioned that my housemate Dostoevsky (whose name was still unknown to Bielinsky) had translated “Eugénie Grandet” than Bielinsky began to abuse our divinity most terribly: he called him a writer for the bourgeois, and said that there was not a page of “Eugénie Grandet” without some error in taste. I was so nonplussed that I forgot every word of the beautifully rehearsed speech.

Probably I impressed him as a stupid boy who could not say a word in defence of his own opinion.

At that time Dostoevsky would spend whole days, and sometimes nights, at his desk. He never said a word about what he was working at; he answered my questions unwillingly and laconically, and I soon ceased to interrogate him; I merely saw countless sheets covered with Dostoevsky’s peculiar writing — every letter as if drawn. I have seen no writing like it, except that of Dumas
père.
When Dostoevsky was not writing, he would sit crouched over a book. For a while he raved about the novels of Soulié, particularly the “Mémoires des Démons.” As a consequence of his hard work and the sedentary life he led, his health was getting worse and worse; those troubles which had occasionally shown themselves even in his boyhood now became increasingly frequent. Sometimes he would even have a fit on one of our few walks together. Once we chanced to come on a funeral. Dostoevsky insisted on turning back at once; but he had scarcely gone a few steps when he had such a violent fit that I was obliged to carry him, with the help of some passers-by, into the nearest shop; it was with great difficulty that we restored him to consciousness. Such attacks were usually followed by a state of great depression, which lasted two or three days.

One morning Dostoevsky called me into his room; he was sitting on the divan which served as bed also, and before him on the little writing-table lay a thickish manuscript-book, large size, with speckled edges.

“Sit down here a while, Grigorovitch; I only wrote it out fair yesterday and I want to read it to you; but don’t interrupt me,” said he, with unusual vivacity.

The work which he then read to me at one breath, with no pauses at all, soon afterwards appeared in print under the title of “Poor Folk.”

I always had a very high opinion of Dostoevsky; his wide reading, his knowledge of literature, his opinions, and the deep seriousness of his character, all extraordinarily impressed me; I often asked myself how it was that, while I had already written and published a good deal, and so could account myself a literary man, Dostoevsky did not yet share this distinction. But with the first pages of “Poor Folk” it was borne in on me that this work was incomparably greater than anything that I had so far written; that conviction increased as he read on. I was quite enchanted, and several times longed to clutch and hug him; only that objection of his to effusions of feeling, which I knew so well, restrained me — but I could not possibly sit there in silence, and interrupted him every moment with exclamations of delight.

The consequences of that reading are well-known. Dostoevsky has himself related in his
Diary
how I tore the manuscript from him by force, and took it to Nekrassov forthwith. He has indeed out of modesty said nothing of the reading to Nekrassov. I myself read the work aloud. At the last scene, when old Dyevuchkin takes leave of Varenyka, I could no longer control myself, and broke into sobs. I saw that Nekrassov also was weeping. I then pointed out to him that a good deed should never be put off, and that, in spite of the late hour, he should instantly betake himself to Dostoevsky, to tell him of his success and talk over the details of the novel’s appearance in the magazine.

Nekrassov too was very much excited; he agreed, and we really did go straight off to Dostoevsky.

I must confess that I had acted rashly. For I knew the character of my housemate, his morbid sensibility and reserve, his shyness — and I ought to have told him all quite quietly next morning, instead of waking him in the middle of the night, and, moreover, bringing a strange man to visit him.

Dostoevsky himself opened the door to our knocking; when he saw me with a stranger, he was frightfully embarrassed, turned pale, and for a long time could make no response to Nekrassov’s eulogiums. When our guest had gone, I expected that Dostoevsky would overwhelm me with reproaches. But that did not happen; he merely shut himself up in his room, and for a long time I heard him walking excitedly up and down.

After Dostoevsky had in this way come to know Nekrassov, and through him Bielinsky too (for the latter, also, soon read “Poor Folk” in manuscript), he was suddenly as if metamorphosed. During the printing of the novel he was continually in a state of the most excessive nervous excitement. His reserve went so far that he never told me a word of what further ensued between him and Nekrassov. I heard indirectly that he exacted from Nekrassov that his novel should be set up in quite peculiar type, and that every page should have a sort of framing. I was not present at the negotiations, and cannot therefore say whether these rumours were founded on truth.

One thing I can decidedly say: the success of “Poor Folk, “and still more the extravagant eulogiums of Bielinsky, had a bad influence on Dostoevsky, who till then had lived wholly shut in with himself and had associated only with people who took no interest at all in literature. How could such a man as he have remained in his normal condition of mind, when at his very first entrance to the literary career, an authority like Bielinsky prostrated himself before him, and loudly proclaimed that a new star had arisen in Russian literature? Soon after “Poor Folk,” Dostoevsky wrote his novel “Mr. Prochartchin,” which likewise was read aloud to Nekrassov; I was invited to the reading. Bielinsky sat opposite the author, listened greedily to every word, and now and then expressed his delight — saying over and over again that nobody but Dostoevsky was capable of such psychological subtleties.

But perhaps Bielinsky’s enthusiasm had less effect on him than the subsequent complete revulsion in Bielinsky’s appreciation and that of his circle.

About that time Bielinsky said in a letter to Annenkov: “Dostoevsky’s ‘Mistress of the Inn’ is terrible stuff! He has attempted a combination of Mariinsky and Hoffmann, with a dash of Gogol. He has written other novels besides, but every new work of his is a new calamity. In the provinces they can’t stand him at all, and in Petersburg even ‘ Poor Folk’ is abused; I tremble at the thought that I shall have to read this novel once more. We’ve been well taken in by our ‘gifted’ Dostoevsky!”

So Bielinsky wrote, the most honest man in the world, and he meant every word of it most honestly and thoroughly. Bielinsky never flinched from declaring his opinion of Dostoevsky, and all his circle echoed him.

The unexpected transition from idolization of the author of “Poor Folk” to complete denial of his literary talent might well have crushed even a less sensitive and ambitious writer than Dostoevsky. Thenceforth he avoided all those who were connected with Bielinsky’s circle, and became more reserved and irritable than ever. At a meeting with Turgenev, who likewise belonged to Bielinsky’s set, Dostoevsky unhappily lost control of himself, and all the anger which had gathered in him flamed forth; he said that he was not afraid of any one of them, and would tread them all into the mud in time. I forget what was the immediate cause of the outbreak; I think they were speaking of Gogol, among others. But in any case I am convinced that Dostoevsky was to blame. Turgenev was never given to quarrelling; he might rather be reproached with too great pliancy and gentleness of character.

After the scene with Turgenev it came to an open breach between Dostoevsky and the Bielinsky set. Now they overwhelmed him with derision and biting epigrams, and he was accused of monstrous conceit; they said too that he was jealous of Gogol, whom in justice he should adore, since on every page of “Poor Folk “the influence of Gogol was unmistakable.

This last reproach, if it
is
a reproach for a novice, was not quite unjustified. Old Dyevuchkin in “Poor Folk” does undoubtedly recall Poprischtschin the functionary, in the “Memoirs of a Madman” of Gogol; in the scene where Dyevuchkin loses a button in the presence of his superiors and, much embarrassed, tries to pick it up, one cannot but think of that scene of Gogol’s where Poprischtschin tries to pick up the handkerchief which his superior’s daughter has dropped, and comes to grief on the parquet floor. Not only the constant use of the same word over and over again, but the whole composition, betrays Gogol’s influence.